Victims, Vagabonds, and Vampires
by Kairos Impending
Summary: This is where I'll be putting my short one-shot stories that have to do with supporting characters or pairings other than B/A. Each chapter is its own work; further information will be in the notes.
1. The Third Defenestration of Prague

**Title: **The Third Defenestration of Prague

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **This is how I imagine the angry mob that nearly killed Drusilla in Prague. Naturally there had to be a defenestration.

* * *

The first one in saw something he had not expected. A woman in white had a child in her arms, cradling it, kissing it, but the kiss was oozing a red stream over the child's pajamas, and a man stood nearby holding another woman, his hand clamped over her mouth to hold in her screams. She had been the one they had heard from downstairs - _Pomoc, moje dcera, moje dcera_ - but the newcomer couldn't understand the words that her captor was saying now to his companion: "Finish up, Dru, there's more of them coming." Nor did he understand when the man looked at him, kicking in the door and panting, and said, "Oh, bloody hell, you couldn't give us a hot minute of privacy?"

The first one in was the first one to die, but there were more of them coming, and they saw what he had, and they saw how he threw himself at the blond Englishman without regard for his own safety. They saw the strange woman drop a dead child on the floor, blood on her lips. They saw the child's mother get one more piercing scream out before the blond man snapped her neck and reached out to perform the same trick on the doomed hero that was rushing him.

But there were more of them coming. Soon they were streaming in the door. The woman sang nursery rhymes in heavily accented Czech as they attacked her; the man made sarcastic comments in English. Neither seemed concerned, at first, though they no longer had time to kill each opponent before the next came, and were simply knocking them out of the way. The little flat was reaching its maximum capacity as more and more residents of the complex found their way to the battle. In the corridors and on the stairs they asked each other what was happening. Some spoke of murderers. Some knew nothing except that a woman had cried out for her daughter. Some believed in vampires, and for the first time in their lives, could admit it out loud.

A crowd to mirror the one inside was gathering below the window. Although it was five stories up and little could be seen aside from a general commotion, someone must have known, for vampires were being invoked here, too, and fingers were pointing up, accusations being thrown, a trail of recent deaths being traced to their source. Police sirens were blaring, but officers who were nearest had to phone back to headquarters and say that the backup needed to prepare for a riot, not a suspected homicide.

Up in the flat, the deadly couple had been overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The woman wailed as the residents pressed her against the wall, a heart-rending sound. "Time to go, ducks," the man said urgently, but he himself was grappling with three big men, and the only path to the only door was through a wall of enemies. "Sod it," he snarled, "I'll kill everyone in this rotten city! I'll give nightmares to your empty streets! Come on! Come on! Come on!"

He might have cleaved through them and escaped, but at that moment, someone got the woman to the window and shoved. Her fall didn't come immediately; she twisted and kicked herself free twice, but finally they had her half outside and held by her ankles, and there was nothing for her to grab when they let go.

"DRUSILLA!" howled her paramour. Nobody could restrain him - one moment he was surrounded, and the next, he was perched in the window, braced against its frame and looking down at the knot of bodies beneath him. "Run hard, love! I'll find you!"

When asked about it later, nobody could describe exactly what happened next. The Englishman didn't fall or jump out the window, and he didn't vanish before their eyes, but he was no longer in the room with them. Surely he couldn't have made it to the roof from that window, but there were a few who said they were sure they had seen him go up, his boots hanging down in front of them for a bare second before he was lost to everyone's view.

Those on the ground had questions of their own. The woman had survived her fall. The woman could not have survived her fall. She was standing up. She could not be standing up.

Some who had been ready to attack whatever came out of the building stepped back, suddenly uncertain. Some who had tried to catch her, imagining her innocent, turned and escaped into the night. For a moment she had a clear circle around her, untouched by the press of the crowd, and their breath sounded heavy in the stillness of anticipation. Footsteps thundered through the building behind her, the army from the flat coming down as reinforcements.

She ran.

The spell broke like a tidal wave. "D'abel je!" someone screamed, and the message echoed over a hundred panicked tongues: _devil, devil, it's a devil._ The chase began. She was fast, but they were many.

Nobody who was there at the end had been there at the beginning. It was a miracle, in a way, that enough comprehension of the evening's events remained that the last ones chasing her through the alleys still had demons and vampires on their minds. A few of them might have known all the truth there was to know - soulless, deadly, stakes, fire - but such practical wisdom has a way of getting lost in excitement, and the stampede only aspired to tear her apart with their bare hands.

Twice their fury was stoked to raving, first when they saw her take three bullets to the chest without slowing, and second when she was struck by a police car, rolled up its hood, and regained her feet on top of it. As if it had all been part of her design, she took off with a ballet dancer's leap, and the chase went on.

Perhaps the greatest mystery was the sword. Whoever used it knew what it was, which was extraordinary in and of itself, but that knowledge didn't come from the owner. As far as anyone could see, there was no owner. The sword, an ancient and gleaming piece of steel passed down through the ages from Saint Wenceslas himself, seemed to have joined the battle of its own accord, and at the vital moment, it was in the hands of one who could use it to full effect. Where it had been kept for so many centuries, how it was still so sharp, what kind of enchantment had blessed it, and even what happened to it afterward, all remained unknown.

She moaned as it pierced her heart. So she was not invincible, they saw, and again the hush fell over them. Within seconds, her eyes were closed, her body lay still, and the sword was withdrawn. The life drained out of her, she looked like any beautiful woman, tragically murdered in her white dressed spattered with red. Nobody could bear it. They took their sword, took their fear, and left her.

Not a minute had passed before a dark shape dropped from a rooftop and padded softly toward her mangled form. Pale fingers with chipped black nail polish touched her face. Her eyes opened. "Spike," she said, lips curving into a smile. "Shhh. It's hide-and-seek. Count to a hundred, and we'll find them."

"That we will, love," he murmured, lifting her into his arms. "That we will."


	2. Palm

**Title: **Palm

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG-13

**Notes: **This isn't exactly slash, but I've given blanket permission to consider it as such: Spike and Angel having one of their fond moments during the battle of NFA.

* * *

The light was gone. His bones were broken. The sounds of the battle were distant, as if they were coming from a televised replay, but annoying, as if the television was a foot away and at full volume. He tried to turn from it and couldn't. Someone was losing. Did that mean someone was winning?

"Spike," said a voice, coming through reality and not a television. A hand dropped onto his shoulder like the jaws of a wolf. "Spike, get up."

"Fuck you."

Those big hands pulled him onto his back, and he couldn't turn away from that, either. "I'll help you."

"I'm dying, numbskull. Let me be." He was dying. Everything was broken.

"You're not going to die. We're not done yet. I need you to keep fighting."

In a sudden wash of dread, Spike realized it was true. The battle was still in full swing. Nobody was winning, and he wouldn't be allowed to die until they were. "_Angel_," he protested.

Angel said nothing. For a few seconds he ignored Spike entirely, leaping to his feat to dispatch a hellish creature that had come to investigate the two vampires crouched in an alley, but then the enemy was dead and Angel was hovering again. Spike could see his intent gaze through his own wet eyes. "You're thinking with your bloody sword again. I can't. _Move._ I can't fight."

"I know." Angel studied the wreckage of Spike's body. Under any other circumstances, the kindest thing would have been to conceal him from enemies and the eventual sunrise, and return in the case of his own survival. But these were no ordinary circumstances, and kindness could not be a priority. "I drank Hamilton's blood. It's potent. If you take some, it could heal you."

"Take some? What, by sipping it out of you? That's like using your bathwater. Get away from me."

Angel didn't obey. He was barely listening, already focused on the problem of how to get the blood in question out of his own veins and into Spike's. A few minutes ago he would have had any number of open wounds to choose from, but he was healing too fast, and now he would have to make a new one. He scowled, letting the expression expand until it transformed his face, and dug a fang into his left palm.

"Don't try it," Spike warned, struggling feebly. "Get off. I'm not your bloody girlfriend."

He was silenced in a second by Angel's dripping palm over his mouth, but Angel wished he had chosen a different taunt. The last person he had done this for was Darla, and then it was for no other reason than that she wanted him to. Her tongue had tickled him as she unlaced his breeches, and later he had marked her palm in the same way, to remind her that they were equals.

Spike's tongue tickled too, but the sky blue eyes that watched him now were full of hatred, and no amount of reciprocation would settle it.

It was working, though. Angel didn't feel any weaker, but the changes to Spike's body were already visible. When he reached some particularly painful stage of the unnatural healing process, he roared and his body spasmed, taking Angel by surprise and making him lose his bloody hand's tentative grip. In an instant their positions were reversed, with Angel on his back and a half-mad vampire pinning him down. Rather than going for the neck, as Angel almost expected him to, he bit into the left wrist, where the blood from the already-healed puncture on Angel's palm had dripped. For a few long, silent seconds, Angel allowed him to continue, and then he tore his arm away, punched Spike's face with his other hand, and jumped up to his feet.

Spike stood up slowly, in dazed deliberation, and flexed his newly functional arms and legs. He faced Angel, who was empty-handed and unharmed. Decades of accusation and interdependence rushed between them.

Angel stooped and picked up a sword, not his own. He tossed it to Spike, hilt-first. "Get to it," he said, and went running back into the battle.


	3. Victor's Burden

**Title: **Victor's Burden

**Author: **Kairos

**Rating: **PG

**Notes: **With Buffy gone for the summer after Season One, Xander and Angel deal with their respective issues about what happened in "Prophecy Girl".

* * *

"Hey, Giles?" Xander was rummaging through the large plastic bin that Giles had placed on the library's table. He had always had a personal policy of staying as far away from school grounds as possible during summer break, but Buffy's arrival in Sunnydale had changed things in more ways than one. Here he was, of his own accord, and after sunset, no less.

Giles looked down from the stacks, where he was selecting a few more books and reshelving a few others, with Willow's help. "Yes?"

Xander reached into the bin and held up a handful of soft, heavy cloth. "I can't help noticing these are robes."

"They are. The ritual requires that each of us be, ah, properly attired."

Willow leaned over the railing for a closer look. "We all get to wear those? Cool! Are they different colors?"

"No, they're quite uniform," said Giles. "The light grey color is symbolic of the uncertainty of the afterlife. They're also one-size-fits-all, Xander, so you can save yourself the effort of being the first to choose one."

"I was counting them," Xander objected. "It's a trick Willow taught me for finding out the number of things."

"Way back in sixth grade," Willow agreed as she descended the stairs and joined him at the table. "Ooh, I call dibs on this one!"

"Five," said Xander. "Is the point I was making. There's five of them."

Giles followed Willow at a more leisurely pace, three books in his arms and the top one  
open. He nodded without taking his eyes from it. "The pentagram is the classic shape for the burial of the malignant undead. One person stands at each point, with the grave at the center. I'll read this passage aloud-" he tapped the book "-we'll consecrate the ground, and the Master should remain safely sealed in death."

"But who's we, besides us?" asked Willow. "Buffy's not here, and Cordelia...well, we _could_ ask her, but..."

"But she's bad enough when you _don't_ owe her a favor?" Xander snorted.

"I know!" said Willow brightly. "Miss Calendar!"

If Giles blushed, it was very brief and barely noticeable. "I've already called her. She's agreed to join us."

"According to my expertise, that makes four," said Xander.

"Yes." Giles hesitated. He had never been even slightly susceptible to superstition, but he couldn't always definitively pinpoint why he found something disturbing. He wanted to appear confident in front of the students, but privately he wished he had found another option. "The fifth is, ah, is Angel. The description of the ritual seems to indicate that the presence of another vampire won't affect the process of burying one."

Willow made another excited noise, but Xander grumbled, "Good work, captain. Found us someone who's even worse company than Cordelia."

/\\\\/\\\\/\\\\/\\\\

The ritual was meant to be conducted at midnight during the full moon, but Angel had come early to the cemetery, and all the others came together, not much later. He watched them find their way to the fresh grave covering the Master's bones, chattering and occasionally stumbling in the darkness. Jenny walked close to Giles, smiling up at him often; Xander guided Willow away from hidden obstacles without seeming to realize he was doing it. Angel felt a stab of envy, not his first. People who could count on each other were always hard for him to watch.

"Here we are," announced Giles, and everyone stopped. Angel took that as his cue to emerge from the shadows.

"Whoa!" said Xander. "Look who's punctual. Or did we just accidentally walk into your bedroom?"

Angel ignored the jibe, greeting the others and accepting a robe from Giles. He liked Willow, appreciated what little he had seen of Jenny, and had a great deal of respect for Giles, but so far he had been unable to find anything to enjoy about Xander. The last time they had seen each other had been the night of Buffy's battle with the Master, when Xander had threatened him with a cross and insisted that they go together to do the impossible. Angel had wished at first to stay home and work out a way around the prophecy, and then that Xander had allowed him to go alone and die alone.

When it turned out that both of them were needed in the lair, Angel for his direction and Xander for his breath, the revelation had been staggering. Xander was right. Not only that, but Buffy had lived without thwarting the prophecy - trying to find a way around it had been the wrong approach all along, yet without Xander, she would have been facedown in a puddle of water while the Hellmouth devoured Sunnydale.

No amount of gratitude for Buffy's savior was enough, but Angel hadn't been able to bring himself to thank Xander. His own interest in Buffy's continued survival had nothing to do with Xander's efforts to find and revive her, he knew, and he couldn't express his thanks without implying that he had some special claim on her. Instead, he thought he might talk to Buffy, tell her that he had been wrong to doubt her friends, that Xander had been brave and resourceful and stupid in all the right ways, and that she could do no better than to have him by her side for whatever came next.

That had come to nothing too. He had joined the group at the Bronze after the Master's defeat, mingling with humans just as if he were one of them, and found himself before long sitting at a table alone with Buffy. Willow and Xander were dancing, Cordelia removed herself from their company as soon as they were in the public eye, and Giles and Jenny were talking somewhere, a safe distance from the childish festivities. Buffy leaned against Angel's arm, to his immense thrill, her inhibitions temporarily vanquished by her ordeal. She began to talk. She told him about her terror of the Master, how it felt to drown, how part of her still felt like it was happening and it would always be happening. She even described her conversations with her mother and Willow before the fight, and the one she'd had, early in the day, with Xander. "Not really relevant," she said. "But I'd been stressing about it all afternoon, and then I opened my eyes and there he was...it was weird."

Angel could find no response, but he took her hand under the table and she gave him the most beautiful smile he could imagine. His speech about Xander condensed into a mere, "He cares about you a lot," and Buffy nodded, and the topic came to its end. She didn't want to date Xander, and her friendship with him didn't need any additional encouragement. Angel's shame at being shown up by an obnoxious teenage boy would not be getting an outlet. That was alright. Buffy had lived, she was there, her fingers were entwined with his, and nothing else mattered.

"I wish Buffy were here," said Willow, bringing him back to the present. He pulled on his robe and settled it over his shoulders, as the others were doing.

"Yeah," agreed Xander. "Just doesn't feel right to be up to shenanigans in the cemetery without her."

Jenny rolled her shoulders a few times and held out her arms, adjusting the folds of her robe. "Has anyone heard from her since she left?"

Willow, apparently, had received a call a few nights ago, and she eagerly filled everyone in on what she and Buffy had discussed. Angel wanted to know how she was doing, but he was only half-listening. He had seen the movement of a person in the distance, nothing that any of the humans would have been able to pick up, and he was straining his senses to figure out if it was living or dead. He didn't think that a vampire would want to stray too near a ritual of consecration so soon after the Master's defeat, but if it did, he would be the one who had to fight it, and he wanted to be prepared.

"Angel?" said Willow, and he realized it was for the second time.

He blinked, losing the intruder's shape in the darkness. "What?"

"I said, has Buffy called you? Or written?"

"No," he said shortly. He considered telling Giles about the vampire - he was fairly sure it was a vampire - but it didn't seem likely to come any closer, and he didn't want to scare the teenagers. Maybe after they finished their work here.

It didn't bother him that Buffy hadn't attempted to contact him. He had been so careful to limit their communication through the year that she probably felt uncomfortable with the idea of speaking to him like one of her friends. The night before she left for Los Angeles, he had tapped on her window and they said their goodbyes, sitting together on the roof outside her room. They even kissed before she went back inside - so lightly, so briefly, that he wasn't sure it had happened until she ducked her head and turned shy. "Keep an eye on Sunnydale while I'm gone? It needs a lot of looking after. You know. Firm hand."

"Of course," he said automatically, but later, it was this answer that would keep his mind busy, worrying at it like a dog with a rat. Of course? When had the protection of the town become automatic for him? He was here for the Slayer, but he had never thought that he could be the one to take on her job. Once, he had been able to destroy other vampires with hardly an effort, and would do so for no better reason than boredom, but he wasn't Angelus anymore. Angel just barely trusted himself to take down a sole fledgling. He was no Buffy, of that he was certain.

But if not him, then who? As he and the others took their places at the points of the pentagram, he found himself studying Xander, across and to his left. The boy hadn't known what he would face in the tunnels. He had no good reason to believe that he would be able to save Buffy from her fated death. Yet he hadn't thought he would be sacrificing his own life, either. Angel was sure of that: Xander might have had nothing to offer but good intentions, but he had entered the playing field to win, not to make a symbolic and fatal gesture of loyalty. And by some unexpected turn of the game, he had won. He had ignored all reason and done exactly what he needed to do.

The demon inside him, Angel understood, could still be a danger. He couldn't afford to let himself get jealous. But for a moment, as Giles spoke the incantation and the lone vampire lurked somewhere behind him, Xander looked up and met Angel's eyes. Neither of them committed to an expression, but Angel knew a challenge when he saw one, and Xander was all too clearly aware that he had one victory behind him already. _But I won, too_, Angel thought. _I came into the lair. I found her. She lived._

When the ritual was finished, Angel said he would go home the way he came, and the other four departed from the grave together, chatting innocently once again. Angel followed them with his senses for a minute, and then set off to find the other vampire lurking somewhere in the night. If Buffy's friends were to make it out of here safely, he had a job to do.


End file.
